


from childhood’s hour (i have not been as others were)

by chelfairy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Canon - Anime, Character Study, Child Kageyama Tobio, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Introspection, Kageyama Tobio-centric, Kitagawa Daiichi, Loneliness, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, References to Depression, Sad Kageyama Tobio, Team as Family, Unrequited Love, Volleyball, bildungsroman-esque, i'm sorry i love tobio i promise, it's not very explicit for those two but its heavily implied, the pairing is heavily implied and can be read platonic, tobio's got the sads and he's lonely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23133760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelfairy/pseuds/chelfairy
Summary: tobio thinks, when he sets the ball, and it doesn’t hit a person, doesn’t even hit a wall, that he’s never really outgrown  playing volleyball in isolation, without a net or a coach or a team. he just changed the target from something that could cast judgement but never speak, to something that could.
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio & Karasuno Volleyball Club, Kageyama Tobio & Kindaichi Yuutarou, implied Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 14
Kudos: 164





	from childhood’s hour (i have not been as others were)

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i wrote 2k of this one evening when i SERIOUSLY should have been studying for a maths exam and then the plot bunny wouldnt?? leave?? me?? alone???? 
> 
> as usual thanks: @denise for betaing this mess, hyping me and falling in love with tobio too, @jenjen for hyping my nonsense and probably crying over this, @esmee for hyping this and helping me pick a summary for this useless mess
> 
> for a fun drinking game (if youre of AGE) to get you through this sustained mild angst, take a shot every time i say: tobio, like, something or anything. if you want liver failure take a shot every time i say he (do not i say it 400+ times you will die)

when tobio is young, his mother tells him he’s adorable, but his grandmother disagrees. she tuts around that way all grandmothers do, with the authority of one who has seen people grow, and change and learn, and  _ nags _ about how tobio should talk  _ more _ and tobio should smile  _ more _ and tobio should laugh  _ more _ , it’s not good, not good at all for a child so small to act so stern and  _ cold _ . 

tobio, is all of four, and falling in love for the first time.  _ love that isn’t taught or programmed _ , with something that doesn’t come with terms and conditions. he can barely hear her, over his father’s placating comments and his mother’s vigilant eyes. 

he thinks, if he’s allowed to stand on a court one day, he’ll smile plenty.

* * *

tobio is six,  _ almost _ seven and he still hasn’t gotten the hang of talking to people, or smiling or laughing. he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of making friends, either, but that’s neither here nor there. he’s pretty content to set balls at the walls, who do not demand or judge or expect. tobio has mastered the art of playing volleyball, alone. 

but, even without a team, volleyball is pretty fun. vaguely, he hopes somewhere in the future, he gets to play on a real court. 

his mother asks him what he wants to do for his birthday this time round; a date that for the past few years he’s spent exclusively with well-meaning relatives, his parents and his ball. he thinks, little else is needed, the date so close to the start of a new year, the start of a new volleyball season but not quite close enough that tickets to matches can be begged of as a gift. 

he considers asking his mother for a net rather than a party, but she is far more invested in his endeavours into elementary school friendships than he is, and her earnest wish for him to spend time with his age mates makes him pause to consider. 

the subject is dropped shortly afterwards, when it becomes clear, he has no-one to invite.

* * *

tobio doesn’t ever truly stop to think that he’s lonely, until he’s nine years old. 

his grandmother has spent most of his life worrying over his frowning face and his sharp, vacant eyes and his hyper-fixation on a sport that will most likely never love him back, the way he loves it. when he stops to consider it, contemplating the ugly trickle of doubt and worry which is common of all children his age, he decides that his grandmother’s anxiety is sufficient for the both of them and moves swiftly onwards. 

playing volleyball on a team for the first time is interesting, and he thinks it’s stupid that he should feel lonely now - surrounded by people that seem to like the sport, just never as much as he does. 

occasionally, when he’s standing on the waxed wooden floors he even manages to smile. 

at dinners now, he can tell his mother he sat with others, rattle off whatever arbitrary parts of the other boys’ conversation he can dredge from his memory and pretend he is invested in the things other children his age are. pretend, that during his lunch, he didn’t do little else but sit at the edge of the bench and lick yogurt of his spoon in silence. 

moments like these he wishes vaguely he was more like his sister, steadfast and earnest and confident and clever and sociable, instead of the quiet boy who liked milk and volleyball and really wasn’t much good at anything else.

by the time he’s  _ almost _ ten instead of just nine, when he steps into the artificial light of the gym, they start to call him a genius, and somehow those words drop something heavy on his shoulders.

* * *

elementary ends in a flurry of lavender and mustard bouquets on hands and knees and carmine under nails and cartons of milk and yogurt pots and his mother and father’s pride, and his grandmother insistent worry and the first time tobio ever feels  _ loneliness _ . 

it’s his elementary graduation, and how absurd that they even graduate from elementary, and he’s standing in his uniform, something he’s never quite managed to make feel comfortable. 

his classmates have grown and changed the same way the sakura trees that line the school property now had branches that could shake hands with humans. tobio has been left behind here, tobio has been left behind in a lot of things - he won’t really dwell on these. 

he knows he’s still small, hollow bones and fragile, white, dumpling-wrapper skin. his visage sits on that edge between cute and petulance and the sharpness of his cobalt gaze is offset by the usual emptiness of his mind, vacancy of his stare and the childish roundness of his face. 

his mother tells him that he’s growing to be _ very handsome _ , his father too was a late bloomer and look at him now; his father says  _ men with cool eyes break hearts _ with a laugh and a wink; his grandmother says, in that way that could be malicious but is so achingly desperate,  _ don’t let your face make you lonely  _ and worries and worries and worries about how little he laughs and how little he smiles and how little he talks. 

tobio worries too because there’s been this thing, perched on his shoulders that he can’t ever quite shake and today, looking out at the people he has spent his early solitude with prance around, so clearly not alone, so ready to move forwards together, if physically apart, is jarring and scary and for the first time ever tobio understands what it’s like to be left  _ alone _ . 

he wishes he was six again and he had made the choice. 

* * *

his senpai is absolutely  _ intolerable _ in the best of ways. tobio is fascinated at how a single person can so easily chase away the isolation and bring conflicting people together. 

junior high school volleyball is in a whole different league and tobio, truly, wants to play in a team, properly. there are other first years like him, who come to the court with something like love in their eyes, hope half feverish that volleyball loves them back - hope other things love them back too and maybe that’s the difference between him and them, tobio has only ever wanted one thing to love him and as of yet he’s never quite gotten it - and they look at him and they seem to see something they want, something they like. tobio tries to smile, sometimes he must succeed because they smile back. it’s always been easiest on the court.

tobio tells his grandmother to  _ stop worrying _ , he’s not alone anymore, people talk to him now, if he were to throw a party, there would be guests to invite and it’s okay, it’s okay, volleyball seems to love him back. 

he doesn’t throw a party, but this time it’s his choice. or so he tells himself. because he doesn’t really want to spend his birthday with anyone but his mother or his father or his grandmother and that’s fine. rather, he tends the nursery of budding flowers on his arms and legs and files his claw-like nails and tampers his personal ambition and tries to learn, from someone unwilling to teach, to step on the court with a team and not alone. 

* * *

the volleyball season in his first year of junior high school, unsurprisingly to all the senpais, is cut short. 

suddenly, that thing on his shoulder has grown talons or hooks or fangs or something sharp. it tells him in the voice of everyone that is meant to chase away the lonely that he is a genius, and it’s up to him now, to keep everyone on the court, it’s that or he ends up alone.

tobio thinks, half-heartedly and discontent and lonely, it’s an awfully heavy job to do all on your own. he wishes, when he’d asked for help, he’d ask instead of how to play volleyball and improve, evolve, he’d ask how to thrive in a team and not by himself. 

* * *

the last year of junior high, is spent, unsurprisingly, exactly in the manner tobio’s grandmother had been predicting and worrying about when he was  _ four _ . 

that thing on his shoulders has taken the shape of a cloak, a  _ king’s _ cloak, blood red and in tatters and so, so heavy from the weight of expectations and discontent and solitude. to complete his image he’s been given a crown too, it casts shadows over his face and all that empty space in his vacant gaze pools with dark light and his eyes have always been such a sharp blue and the court has never seemed so much like a void, the florescent lights do nothing for his flour-water-salt skin or his petulant frown. 

tobio thinks, when he sets the ball, and it doesn’t hit a person, doesn’t even hit a wall, that  _ he’s never really outgrown playing volleyball in isolation _ , without a net or a coach or a team. he just changed the target from something that could cast judgement but never speak, to something that could. 

* * *

tobio plans to spend his last birthday in junior high the same way he’s spent every birthday in his short life, with his parents, his grandmother and his ball. his mother asks at one point, in a strange moment of deja vu, if he wants a party. the subject, for the _second_ _time_ , is dropped; he has no one to invite. 

he thinks with shame, that he can’t even ask for a net this time. 

his grandmother, upset as though she hadn’t seen it coming, gets him fluffy cartoon socks. it’s a gag gift but he appreciates them nonetheless. lately, he’s had a terrible case of cold feet. He wonders if it’s his body playing tricks, or his mind. 

his father says he’s been  _ pushing himself too hard _ , his growing body adapting to his athlete lifestyle, his mother insists that he needs to _ eat more meat, _ there’s a history of low iron in her family and he’s always subsided mainly on cartons of plain whole milk and fruity yogurt pots. 

* * *

in the end somehow, they get him a dog. it’s right before new years celebrations and so everyone is a bit too busy to spend time with him, and tobio too. he guesses they could get used to being alone together.

* * *

junior high ends with tobio sitting on the hard, cool bench staring at bright white spots on the shiny, sweaty wooden courts floors. the room is filled with people and yet feels gaping hollow. he wishes he were  _ outside _ , the grey-white of his first ball, sky blue, his grandmothers nagging and his mother’s curious glance and a worn sturdy wall. 

* * *

his family is not particularly surprised that he fails the entrance exam for the school he wants to go to. they’d encouraged him of course, done anything to pull him out of the listless kind of  _ heartbreak _ he’s fallen into. 

he spends a semester like a normal student, instead of the tyrant king he has been so fittingly cast. spends his lunches by himself, sometimes with a white ball and a blank wall, always with a carton of milk and a frown. warm evenings, their pretty mauve and saffron palette blur into an eternal dusk that he spends running in humid air, bowing to the wishes on the only thing in his life that pierces his bubble of isolation unrepentantly. a dog. he studies, to his father’s amusement and his mother’s shock, and his cousins’ confusions and his grandmother’s growing anxiety. 

but tobio has always been bad with his words, reluctant to talk and even more reluctant to learn and so it comes as no great shock to see the crisp, white of the rejection letter.

tobio wishes he were shocked when he saw it, but all he can think about is how his grandmother was right, that he should have smiled more and laughed more and talked more and that he should have  _ stopped loving a sport that wouldn’t love him back _ .

there are four different types of apologies hidden in black ink, he’s handed so many condolences and yet he’s still the one who feels the most sorry.

his father says, this might be fate, but tobio can’t bring himself to think that the only place that volleyball has ever shown their  _ love _ was destined to sit right in front of his eyes, a train ride away without him ever reaching it, a stop he has to skip.

his mother believes he’s fallen into some sort of  _ teenage angst _ , hands him a glass of milk and tobio wishes it was water from that one river that could wipe memories clean, wishes he was still  _ four _ and unworried about his cool blue eyes and his empty,  _ dough _ face.

* * *

initially, tobio doesn’t ever expect to find himself on waxed, wooden floors again. On the first day of high school he introduces himself as stiffly as he always has, hopes the light catches his cobalt eyes and makes them look like there’s something going beneath the hard dough of his face and frown.

somehow, despite the fact he still doesn’t really know how to talk, or how to smile, or how to laugh. somehow, despite the fact tobio definitely, still, doesn’t know how to play in a team, he ends up playing volleyball again and much like junior high, and elementary before that, his first few days as a high schooler go by in growing flowers across his body and scraping copper off his nails. 

he spent the spring and summer lost and heartbroken and getting used to his own solitude and it hurts the way all his bruises hurt, when agitated and prodded and acknowledged - so he doesn’t, doesn’t plan to, doesn’t want to. 

yet, even here, in a place leagues away from whence he came, no one will let him leave it alone. no, no they’re too busy staring at his rusting crown or asking questions about the tattered, frayed bits and bobs of his heavy, heavy, cloak, calling him  _ king-dictator _ and  _ handsome-scary _ and _ intense-cold _ , and the  _ stupidest genius _ all in the same hushed,  _ poisonous _ breath. 

he spends his lesson time, mind out of the window, hoping the real light, the natural light pours in and cast his eyes the pretty sapphire of his mother; he spends his lunch time hunched over his desk or out on the far end of the school pushing the old buttons on the vending machine for another carton of milk, chewing the straws until his jaw numbs and there is nothing left but a wet, plastic mess that was once a straw or something as helpful; spends his afternoons learning to not hesitate in his set, learning to accommodate in his toss, learning to talk, to people, his team, as tentative as he wants to be with that word, that idea, that vulnerability. 

he hasn’t quite caught onto the smiling or laughing, but it’s a work in progress.

at dinner, his grandmother and mother ask  _ how’s school? _ as he shovels curry into his mouth under their watchful eyes. he says  _ it’s fine, you don’t have to worry _ , but he learnt to prune and pick the plants on his body under their instruction and it’s silly for him to have thought that he could hide himself falling in love again. 

the dogs nose is cold when it presses above his socks. his feet are,  _ still _ , cold. 

* * *

in all honesty practice matches aren’t anything new. tobio is many things, but he’s not a rookie. 

it’s just this time, everything feels oddly personal. 

surprisingly, they win, which is funny because tobio doesn’t know when he started to think he could only lose; in reality he’s spent a lot of his life  _ winning _ one way or another. 

in the bathroom, he’s confronted by someone he was so close to calling a friend, and all of a sudden he’s in his first year of junior high school again and there’s that bubble of isolation repelling him from human connection. 

they’re having a conversation, if you can even call it that, but tobio feels a lot like he’s being talked at, and _ isn’t this how he’s always conversed anyway? _ he still wishes someone had taught him how to talk. 

he opens his mouth, and says what he thinks is fair but is not what he wanted to say. it doesn’t matter anyway. here tobio is just a pivotal moment for someone else, so rarely is the king the protagonist of the story. 

a part of him thinks, despite everything, that it’s easy to be lonely, when you look into the mirror and realise you have a face like his. 

* * *

the day is not over yet. 

he’s about to slip out of the bathroom, out of the building, out of his head, really, if only for a moment. 

he thinks that, slumped in the soft seats on the van and bathed in the golden glow of the afternoon sunlight he will be able to escape the niggling part of his mind that sounds a lot like his grandmothers anxious tittering. he knows on his desk at home there are three assignments in varying degrees of completion that he has to get done; he knows his dad is working late and he can’t send his mother or grandmother out at night, so he’s got to go out and walk the dog in the early twilight, aching muscles and all; he knows that if maybe he’d smiled more or talked more or laughed more he wouldn’t be standing in front of the only senpai, teacher, he’s ever truly admired feeling like little more than a warm up hurdle on an olympic four-hundred meter track. 

tobio wishes in the face of someone he has come to love, i _ n a way that wasn’t taught or programmed, _ he could say he did something,  _ anything _ , bar schooling his expression and taming his heartbreak when he’s told of his impending defeat. 

the whole encounter, the passioned speech, sounds a whole lot like a proclamation of his public execution. despite this, tobio accepts, apologises meekly to his team for the undue wrath he has brought upon them, wishes he could smile reassuringly or crack a joke or make them laugh or do anything but stand and frown and listen. 

instead, unlike the king he’s been cast, and more like the sheep he wishes he’d been, tobio  _ follows _ , he indulges as best he can, he stands in whatever light he’s given and hopes he doesn’t look as stern or as cold.

he thinks, when he gets home, feat trapped in the faded novelty brightness of his socks, a warming nose pressed against the dumpling wrapper skin of his neck that in the end, it won’t really matter anyway, he is already one more weight away from collapsing anyway. 

the talons tighten.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i name literally NO-ONE in this fic because i think it makes the vibe even SADDER and thats very sexy of me,,,,
> 
> whats less sexy is how terrible this actually is, my writing style has collapsed from disuse and my brain was like ????? youre doing this regardless...
> 
> might make this a series in the summer, or if school closes for corona time cuz even though im WOEFULLY behind in haikyuu's current canon (whihc is why this is limited to the first 8 episodes of the anime,,,) because i ALWAYS have feels abut kageyama tobio, my ultimate best boy. 
> 
> (i really say he over 400 times in this fic,,,, i literally hate myself i thought this was edgy and sad but its just bad english)
> 
> look out for demon slayer angst in the near furture ive been reading it weekly and i feel a lot about literally everyone and esp zenitsu, if yall are lucky i may write some mha and fire force stuff too cuz loads of ansgt to be had there
> 
> twt me @chelfairy if you love anime and angst. k bye. comment if youre not shy and kudo if you made it this far, i love yall :)


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